


Snacks

by BurningTea



Category: Leverage
Genre: But reall it's fluff, Fluff, Getting Together, Hurt Eliot Spencer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 15:13:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22498144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: Hardison helps Parker work out how to tell Eliot that she likes beef jerky, too.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Comments: 13
Kudos: 168
Collections: 2019 Leverage Secret Santa Exchange





	Snacks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kiss_me_cassie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiss_me_cassie/gifts).



> I hope this goes some way to meeting what you asked for :)

They find him on his stomach, head turned sideways and eyes closed. It’s not the first time Eliot’s taken on a whole group of goons by himself, but he’s always got back to them under his own steam before. It bothers Hardison more than it probably should do to see Eliot’s hair trailing in a puddle.  
‘He’s gonna be pissed about that,’ he finds himself saying, although Parker gives him no clear response.  
She’s already squatting next to Eliot, her clever fingers seeking out a pulse. The shift of her shoulders reassures Hardison she’s found one, but it can’t be a good sign that Eliot’s out cold.  
‘Ambulance can be here in five minutes,’ he says.  
‘He’d hate to wake up in hospital,’ Parker reminds him, but she doesn’t tell him to forget the idea.  
‘Better than not waking up at all.’  
A groan from Eliot puts the issue on hold for the moment as Hardison joins Parker at ground level. The guy’s eyelids move a little before opening to slits. It’s dim in the warehouse, but Eliot visibly winces like he’s had a torch turned directly into his eyes.  
‘Hey, man,’ Hardison says. ‘Just…just take it steady, okay? You hurt bad? We need an ambulance?’  
Eliot says something, but it’s slurred and hard to make out. The tone alone makes it clear he is against the paramedics getting involved.  
It’s a bad idea to move someone who’s been knocked out, Hardison knows. He also knows slurred speech is a bad sign, and headaches, and confusion, and… The list is long, okay? He’s kept himself awake nights reading up on all the things he should look out for in Eliot, given how the guy won’t just tell them when he’s hurt. Grouch, sure. Enough grouching to need a home in a dustbin. But flat out give them information they might need about his physical state? Not so much.  
Thing is, it’s a bad idea to force Eliot into an official medical situation, as well.  
Hardison shares a look with Parker and taps on his screen. Eliot’s just going to have to be mad at them. 

Parker’s restless. She’s paced back and forth across the waiting room, broken into more than one locked space to see what’s in it (mostly boring stuff, she says), and is now glaring at the vending machine near the seat Hardison’s claimed.  
‘You all right there, Mama?’ he asks.  
There’s not a lot to do just now except to wait and to worry, but maybe he can find something if it’ll keep Parker grounded. Something to go and steal for one of their lined up jobs, perhaps.  
‘I want the jerky,’ she says.  
Which is a great deal easier to sort out than he’d been expecting. Getting a snack out of the machine is not a problem. Hardison is surprised she hasn’t just got herself what she wants, but he digs in his pocket for change anyway and goes to stand by Parker’s side. Maybe the jerky is stuck or something.  
‘I don’t see jerky,’ he says, after a while checking. ‘You want some of those cheese things instead?’  
‘No. I want jerky.’  
She seems more upset than a snack would normally warrant, but then displacing emotions is something Parker and Eliot have in common. Neither one of them’s a big fan of feeling their feelings like healthy, rational people, not when they can fixate on something or hit something or just generally mean Hardison needs a translation manual for them. Good job he’s pretty good at the translating.  
‘We can get you jerky,’ he tells her, and there’s a definite flash of…something on her face. He doesn’t have time to pursue it, though, because a doctor comes to tell them that Eliot’s results are back.  
Hardison spends most of that night researching what they’ll need to make Eliot comfortable at the Brewpub. The guy is not going to be happy. 

‘I ain’t being stuck in this room, Hardison!’  
His speech, at least, isn’t slurred anymore. Those first few hours he’d finally woken up had not been fun, but Eliot already seems better able to vocalize. So far, they’ve been doing a pretty good job of smoothing over when he mixes up or forgets a word. And he for sure hasn’t forgotten how to yell.  
‘You’ll keep your ass in that bed if I have to staple you to the mattress!’ he shouts back, and continues watching the bowl in the microwave spin.  
Nate and Sophie are out for a few hours, dealing with a small job that doesn’t need the rest of them. It’s something the three of them were going to tackle, involving a kid, so Eliot’s been fretting way too much and threatening to go sort it out. As if he could stand long enough to make it to the door. Hopefully, the part of Leverage Int that isn’t always in Portland these days can remove this reason for Eliot to break out. The doctors have been very clear he needs to rest that leg.  
‘He isn’t going to like that,’ Parker says, from over Hardison’s shoulder. ‘He’ll shout.’  
‘You work out how to get him to stop shouting, you let me know.’  
Parker huffs and a moment later the microwave beeps.  
Once he has the bowl in his hands, this time remembering not to use his bare hands, he turns and finds Parker standing on the island. She’s rearranging the pots Eliot keeps handing above it, though as far as Hardison knows she’s never used them for anything other than occasionally hiding something in one.  
‘It doesn’t look too bad,’ he says, setting the bowl on the tray he has ready and frowning down at it.  
‘You were meant to defrost it first.’  
She wasn’t in the room when he started making Eliot’s lunch, but obviously he didn’t defrost it first.  
‘That’s what the microwave is for,’ Hardison protests. ‘Anyway, we’re nearly out of meals. I’m going to have to order some in.’  
They’ve mostly been getting evening meals from the Brewpub itself, but it feels to Hardison like he should take a more active role in feeding Eliot at least some of the time, and all these freezer meals in neatly labeled bags and boxes were stockpiled by Eliot himself. He can’t complain about food he made himself. Of course, it does look less like something Eliot made, now, and more like greasy white blobs in ditch water. Hardison didn’t read the label, and now he can’t even tell what it is.  
Parker’s nose wrinkles. ‘I’m not eating that.’  
She hops from the island and vanishes, leaving Hardison to sigh at the bowl and reach the conclusion that even he can’t try to give this to Eliot. He’ll have to get him something from downstairs, after all.  
He sticks his head in to let Eliot know where he’s going, to find the guy partway across the room, leaning heavily on the back of a chair.  
‘Hey!’ Hardison crosses to him and takes his arm, and most of his weight, guiding him back to the bed.  
Eliot tries to pull away, but he wobbles and finally gives in, clearly boiling with weary frustration. Hardison fusses more than he needs to, arranging the bed covers and plumping up pillows so Eliot has something to snap at, but he wants to snap back. He wants to remind Eliot how bad the beating was this time, how much they need him to recover.  
‘Man, I meant it about the stapling,’ he says.  
‘Yeah, well, we’ll see how that turns out.’  
But Eliot’s words sound tired already and his eyes are losing focus. He needs sleep now, more than food.  
Not long after, Hardison finds Parker at the bar downstairs, every bowl of bar-snacks they offer clustered in front of her like a tiny audience. He takes the stool next to her and watches her tap at the rim of one bowl, then the next. One bowl is pulled closer to the others. The pretzels. He doesn’t try to hide the soft smile on his face at that, even though Parker is just choosing snacks right now. Or maybe she’s deciding which bowls to take to Eliot.  
‘He’s sleeping again,’ he tells her, voice a little lower than normal. Eliot has been twitchy whenever the staff here have been mentioned, probably not wanting them to know the state he’s in. ‘Maybe we can take a few bowls up for later. You think he’d like these cheesy things?’  
Parker looks blankly at the bowl he points to.  
‘I don’t know what he likes,’ she says, sounding that particular type of shut down that means she’s upset about something.  
Hardison wants to comfort her, to help her work through whatever this is, but his ear-bud bursts to life with an urgent message from Nate, and they both get drawn into helping with the job after all. 

Parker seems to forget whatever was troubling her, though Hardison knows her, knows how her twisty, complex mind can work things out and back round again, so he keeps an extra eye out for any sadness.  
It’s a week later, when they’ve left Nate at their place to keep an eye on Eliot and are waiting for Sophie to finish sweet-talking a mark so they can do their bit, that Parker shows signs of returning to the topic.  
‘Do you think we should get snacks?’ she asks.  
They’re hiding away in an empty office directly opposite a corner store, and she’s staring across at it.  
‘You hungry?’  
They’ve gotten used to regular meals over the last year or two, and this period with Eliot stuck not cooking has really brought home to Hardison how much better it is when the guy is able to take care of them. Sophie’s started making comments about the number of pizza boxes piled on the kitchen counter.  
‘Not for me,’ Parker says.  
They can hear Sophie’s signal just as well from over the road, so they go poke at bags of chips and individually wrapped muffins and Parker starts collecting one of everything.  
‘Maybe we should buy stuff after,’ Hardison says. ‘Might be a little tough to crawl through a vent carrying all that.’ He has no doubt Parker could do it, but there’s something a little manic in the way she’s piling things into his arms and he’s worried. ‘Can you really eat all these before we get home?’  
That makes her pause and frown up at him. ‘They’re not for me.’  
In the end, they put most of it back and leave with just a packet of pretzels for Parker and a bag of something neon colored for Hardison. On the way back from the job, he notices she has a second packet in her hands, but he doesn’t have time to see what it is before it’s disappeared. 

When Eliot is finally allowed up, all four of them tidy the apartment, Nate mostly pointing out what the others have missed and Sophie making soft tsking sounds whenever she finds another packet stuffed down the side of a cushion or left under a piece of furniture.  
‘Honestly,’ she says, ‘it’s a good thing Nate and I came back or by now the two of you would be completely feral.’  
‘They always were,’ Eliot grunts, and Hardison looks up from dusting a side-table quickly enough to twinge his neck.  
‘I said I’d come get you, man,’ he scolds, dropping the duster and taking two steps towards Eliot before a glare stops him in his tracks.  
‘And I said I can get to the damn chair just fine.’  
They all watch him sway a little as he walks, the limp noticeable and the tightness in his frame and face easy to see for those who know him, but he does make it by himself.  
‘I’ll make a pot of tea,’ Sophie declares into the slightly subdued silence that follows.  
And they shouldn’t be subdued. Really, they shouldn’t. Eliot’s making good progress, according to the doctors. Better than expected. It’s just…it’s been a lot longer than usual already and he still is nowhere near ready to fight anyone. He’s nowhere near healed. At least they aren’t going to need as much physiotherapy as they were talking about at first, but it occurs to Hardison that, maybe, Eliot isn’t unbreakable after all.  
The thought is a physical discomfort.  
‘Don’t go messing up my magazines,’ he tells Eliot, even though Eliot hasn’t shown any sign of reaching for the pile on the side-table nearest to him.  
‘You’re saying I’m the one who messes this place up?’  
The bickering is reassuring, and Hardison doesn’t know why he still feels that horrible, clenching fear in his chest that came with his earlier thought. Eliot’s fine. He is. They all are.  
It’s only when Sophie breaks them off by bringing Eliot some tea that Hardison notices Parker has slipped away.

He finds her on the roof, the wind whipping her hair about, and wonders if this is one of those times she needs to be alone. Before he can move away, though, she reaches a hand out behind her and wiggles her fingers at him.  
‘You okay, Mama?’ he asks, when he’s stood beside her with her hand in his.  
‘I want something,’ she says, and stops, lips closing over any words that might have followed.  
Hardison waits, because this is not the first time he’s seen Parker struggle to work out her own feelings, or the first time he’s listened as she’s shared them. In place of any words of his own, he gives her space to fill.  
‘I want something…like…’ Again, she stops, but this time she turns to face him and rests her hand on his forearm. ‘You remember when you told me I could have pretzels when I wanted them?’  
Her expression is urgent, in a way so many people can’t read. But Hardison can read her. Hardison knows she wouldn’t bring this up unless it was related.  
‘I remember,’ is all he says.  
She nods, a tight little movement, and pushes on. ‘What if…what if the pretzels…?’ Another breath. ‘What if you hadn’t realized I wanted that? How could I have told you?’  
Understanding is a cool wash through his body. It’s a relief. Because if Parker means what he thinks she means…  
‘You need a way to tell me something you want?’ He lifts the arm she isn’t holding and brushes back a strand of her hair. ‘Or you need a way to tell someone else?’  
Be both, he thinks. Please, be both.  
As usual, Parker gives him everything he wishes for. 

When Eliot limps out of the bathroom, he finds Parker sitting cross-legged on his bed with a determined look on her face and one of Hardison’s tablets in her left hand. He stops, leaning a little on the door frame to take some weight from his injured leg, and makes use of the irritability coursing through him.  
‘I got to fight you for my damned bed, now?’ he asks.  
She shrugs. ‘There’s plenty of space.’  
He won’t admit it, because they’re bad enough already, mother-henning round him for weeks, insisting on looking after him, but Eliot is still tiring far too easily to argue. All he really wants right now is to lie back down on that bed and sleep.  
The bed dips and sways as he settles himself, Parker moving with it, and its oddly comforting to have her perched there, almost level with his shoulders. Still, it’s weird.  
‘What are you doing in here?’ he asks, knowing he sounds drowsy and almost having enough strength back to care.  
In reply, she turns the screen and holds it over his face, a little too close. It takes a moment to focus.  
‘Photos of snacks?’  
‘I talked to Hardison,’ she says, ‘and he says it’s okay if I want pretzels and beef jerky. He says he likes that, too. But I don’t know if you want us to want that.’  
The silence after she stops is loaded. Clearly, something is required of Eliot here, even if he doesn’t know what. Much as he grumbles, he’s long past any thought of being okay with them hurting, not for real, so he tries to work it out. His head is still fuzzy, though, still finding it much harder to grasp and cling to thoughts than it did before the incident, and try as he might, the edges of his thoughts won’t stick together.  
‘Not hungry,’ he says, at last. Sudden frustration fills him. It’s been way too long already and he still can’t get his mind clear, can’t be what he’s meant to be to his team. He knows he needs to eat, but he feels off-balance and sick so much of the time, and he hates that he can’t control that either. ‘Quit bugging me about it, will you? I don’t want any of your damn snacks.’  
Parker is gone before he can ask why it matters. 

Hardison is sitting in the chair near the bed when Eliot wakes up. It’s a sign of how much he’s let his guard down around these people, that he slept through someone coming into the room and staring at him.  
‘I got something on my face?’ he asks, when Hardison doesn’t speak.  
‘No.’ Hardison looks less comfortable than usual, eyes sliding away now that Eliot’s spoken. ‘No, man. It’s just… Look, we didn’t mean to upset you, okay? I don’t want it… We don’t want it to be weird.’  
Eliot has the horrible feeling he’s missed something. It’s far from the first time since he woke up in that hospital bed. It’s not the same as the times he woke up other places, not knowing how he got there or what’s been done to him, but the faint thrum of remembered tension is unpleasant. Harder to hide and manage that, too, with his mind dizzy. Maybe that’s why Hardison looks worried. He’s maybe seeing signs of what Eliot normally keeps controlled.  
‘Hey,’ he says, the fingers of his right hand twitching to reach out and push at Hardison’s shoulder, to pat him and tell him it’s okay. He stills them. If Hardison is worried about Eliot’s emotional state, there’s no sense in letting him see the tremble in those hands. Not like it’ll last long, but it’s something else his team don’t normally see at all. ‘I’m not upset. Just tell her not to wave things in my face when I’m trying to sleep. I wasn’t hungry.’  
Another thing he hates is how easy it is to slip right back into sleep, even when he’s just woken up. It happens now, the lack of words from Hardison leaving a gap into which drowsiness creeps. Eliot’s eyes have shut themselves when Hardison finally responds.  
‘What exactly did Parker say to you?’  
There’s a change in his tone and Eliot frowns.  
‘She rambled on about snacks, man,’ he says. He lifts one hand and drops it, too tired to gesture properly and chafing at it. ‘Showing me photos, like I didn’t know what pretzels look like.’  
Hardison makes one of those noises that mean he’s heard what someone has said, but also can’t quite believe that he has heard the thing someone just said.  
‘And you, what, just told her to get lost?’  
How is Eliot suddenly the one in trouble? He didn’t even know anyone needed to be in trouble before Hardison apologized, and now it’s him.  
‘There some kind of problem here I’m not getting?’ he asks, and hates that thin thread of frustration that’s about more than the usual grouching.  
Hardison waits a beat before replying. ‘Nah, man. No problem. You just get some sleep.’  
It doesn’t take Eliot long to slip back into sleep, but he can’t say it feels all that restful. 

Three days later, Eliot is watching a game on TV, the glare dimmed and Sophie keeping an eye on him to make sure he didn’t develop another headache. Not that anyone’s said that’s why she’s there, but Eliot knows when he’s been watched.  
‘You got any shoes you need to go buy?’ he asks her, though he’s grateful for the fact she’s at least reading a magazine in the armchair, so her babysitting him isn’t as obvious.  
Sophie doesn’t look up as she turns to the next page, an elegant flick of finger and paper that says she is quite intent on reading just now, thank you very much.  
Eliot huffs and tries to refocus on the screen. Thing is, though his eyesight is a lot less blurry in general and his concentration is lasting for longer, the lights from the screen are a bit much. It takes time to recover, he knows, but normally it doesn’t take him this much time, and he has to remind himself again that being annoyed about it is no help. Assess. Adapt. And, in this instance, he’s having to adapt to this taking too much fucking time.  
The door to the hallway opens and Hardison tumbles in with Parker at his heels, the two of them looking keyed up and determined. When they see him on the settee, though, they still and noticeably calm themselves down.  
‘Hey, Eliot,’ Hardison offers, voice softer than usual when they interrupt him watching a game.  
The pair vanish out of his line of sight, hauling bags that he itches to get up and check on, because the last time he was conscious of them doing any grocery shopping, they completely messed up his system.  
‘You stay where you are!’ Hardison orders, and Eliot is still tired enough to let him.  
He does shoot a look at Sophie, though, who raises an eyebrow at the magazine, her lips twitching. Still without looking his way, she closes the magazine, stretches, and leaves the room. Eliot knows for a fact that is not how she normally leaves the room.  
Rustling sounds from elsewhere in the room have him twisting round, mindful of the deeper bruises that still aren’t fully healed, to see Parker tipping some kind of snack food into a bowl on the table. She looks…kind of fizzy.  
Before Eliot can ask what has her this way, she looks up and grins at him.  
‘Come sit over here,’ she tells him.  
The game’s going nowhere anyway, so he pushes himself slowly up from the couch and takes the chair she points at. On the table, there are several bowls, each one containing a different kind of snack food. This again.  
Eliot opens his mouth to tell her to knock it off with this weird obsession with what snacks he likes, when Hardison sits down next to him and jabs him in the shoulder. He hits an uninjured patch, but even so Eliot turns a glare on him.  
‘The snacks are educational,’ Hardison tells him. ‘Listen and all will be clear. Hopefully.’ At a slightly unhappy noise from Parker, Hardison looks her way and shrugs. ‘Hey, no accounting for how thick his skull is.’  
Before Eliot can protest as this sudden insult, Parker disposes of the last packet and hops up onto the table, sitting cross-legged with the bowls arrayed in front of her. Hopefully, this will all start making sense soon, or as much sense as things tend to with Parker.  
‘I wasn’t clear enough last time,’ Parker says, ‘but this time I have teaching aides, so you’ll get it.’  
Eliot has never been in any kind of remedial class in his life, but he feels as though he’s failed one he never knew he was in. In place of getting where this is going, he swallows and nods. Nods, because he wants Parker to see he gets there’s something to explain, and swallows because it occurs to him she’s never had quite this air about her when explaining something to him before. It isn’t like in the ice-cave. There’s a different energy to it. But it does seem to be important.  
‘I’m listening,’ he tells her, and manages to only startle a little when Hardison pats his knee.  
Parker smiles.  
‘Okay, so, these are pretzels.’ She meets Eliot’s eyes as though to check he gets it. ‘The pretzels are Hardison.’  
Which… What? He’s heard them mention pretzels before, and, sure, Hardison has gone all soft and mushy looking, but Hardison does that when Parker breaks into a safe or when she twists herself through laser-grids or… Well, Hardison is soft on Parker, and that is just a fact. It didn’t occur to him that pretzels are some kind of code to these two, and it feels a little like something he shouldn’t be hearing.  
Still, assess and adapt.  
‘Okay, then. Hardison’s pretzels.’  
Parker smiles and Hardison pats his knee again, this time being a little slower to remove his hand.  
‘What are the other bowls?’ Eliot asks, because there are several.  
‘Oh, right.’ Parker leans over and taps the one furthest away, identifying it before moving on to the next, and the next, as though Eliot doesn’t recognize perfectly ordinary snack food.  
Eliot reaches out and stops her hand as it reaches the bowl of beef jerky, and sees her eyebrows do…something he can’t read.  
‘I know what they are, Parker,’ he says. ‘What do they represent?’  
‘You,’ Parker blurts out, before covering her mouth with her other hand and shooting a look at Hardison.  
‘It’s all right, Mama,’ Hardison says, and there’s a pat on the knee again, even though Eliot didn’t give that answer. ‘Probably best you just say it.’  
Eliot raises his own eyebrows and manages not to cross his arms over his chest. For one thing, that still hurts enough he’s been avoiding it, and for the other, he doesn’t want to stop Parker from explaining what this is. So he can get to the game.  
That’s the only reason.  
Parker nods and speaks quickly enough that Eliot wonders if she’s had chocolate.  
‘I like pretzels,’ she says. ‘I love pretzels. And a lot of people think you can only love one, but when you were hurt I told Hardison I like beef jerky, too, and he said so did he. So. There.’  
And she radiates relief.  
‘I…don’t get it,’ Eliot says, because the only inference he can come up with can’t possibly be true.  
‘I am the pretzels,’ Hardison says, leaning closer, so his shoulder is almost touching Eliot’s. ‘Parker loves pretzels. Parker loves me.’  
It should be infuriating, the slow and steady way he presses each word home, but rather than wanting to tell Hardison to shut up, he isn’t stupid, not even with the recovery still not over, Eliot instead wants the words to be faster. He wants to know if his conclusion is right, after all. He needs to know whether to start shouting.  
‘You are the beef jerky,’ Hardison goes on, like that is something anyone wants to be called. ‘Parker loves beef jerky. Parker loves-’  
‘Like,’ Eliot cuts in. ‘She said she likes beef jerky.’  
‘Man, you are… Parker, just say it to him, okay? I think it’s gonna be all right.’  
Looking a little worried, but mostly not, Parker pulls a face but turns the hand Eliot is still holding to grip him back. Her words are slower, too, than usual, which is clearly an effort.  
‘I love Hardison,’ she says, and it should be more comical, the way the repetition makes this sound like some children’s book. ‘And I love Eliot.’ She manages to grip harder, apparently trying to push her own words in through his skin. ‘The same way I love Hardison.’  
Oh… Okay. Clearly, this is a fever dream.  
Eliot nods and shifts his body, ready to stand up and go back to bed, because he needs more sleep, obviously, and Hardison is sitting right next to him and-  
Hardison places his hand back on Eliot’s knee and leaves it there. Eliot stops moving.  
‘Parker loves you, man. So do I. The same way we love each other. You hearing us?’  
Eliot makes some kind of noise, but damned if he knows what he means by it.  
‘Did we break him?’ Parker asks, sounding worried.  
‘Maybe,’ Hardison says.  
His hand lifts and starts to withdraw, just as Parker loosens her grip on Eliot’s hand. Eliot jolts into action. He slaps his free hand down on Hardison’s, keeping it mostly in place, now a little higher up his leg than before. At the same time, he keeps Parker’s hand in his. He speaks with his eyes locked onto those joined hands and the bowl beneath.  
‘Hmmm. Yeah. I, um, I hear you. I… Yeah.’  
Hardison sounds a little more relaxed now, a little amused. ‘You need a minute?’  
Eliot nods, but none of them move.  
Once he’s recovered himself enough to speak, something he still doesn’t find quite so easy as it should be, he tries to be clearer. He does not need another few weeks of confusing metaphors he doesn’t even know are metaphors.  
‘I feel the same.’  
‘Thank Heavens.’ Sophie’s appears from the hallway to the bedrooms, a coat already on and a bag over her arm. ‘I’m going to find Nate and drag him to a really long dinner. And I mean really long.’ She looks unbearably smug. ‘We might even get a room. See you tomorrow, you ridiculous people.’  
In the silence left by her exit, Eliot finally meets first Parker’s eyes, then Hardison’s, and finds them shining.  
‘Did she just…?’ Eliot asks, because Sophie has done everything but put a sock on the door for them.  
‘I think so.’ Hardison doesn’t sound nearly surprised enough. ‘But we don’t got to do anything. We got snacks. We can watch your game. What is it? Tennis?’  
And Eliot must be in shock, because he doesn’t even gripe at Hardison for being so utterly wrong. He just nods.  
They fuss over him, not letting him carry the bowls, even though he can definitely manage that, and pretty soon he’s staring at the screen with Parker leaning on one side of him and Hardison on the other. And it feels right.  
They talk quietly, on and off, slowly sorting out what they are to each other, what it means, but they aren’t in any rush. It’s only when Parker picks up a pretzel and a piece of jerky and takes a bite out of the two together that Eliot’s brow crinkles. More than one thought is conjured, but he sets aside any of the ones that will require being physical. He isn’t ready for that, yet. He goes with the lightest thought.  
‘So we know what Hardison and me are,’ Eliot says, nudging a bowl on the coffee table with his right foot. ‘But what’s Parker?’  
That seems to stump her. She looks back at him, eyes wide. ‘I don’t know.’  
‘We’ll work it out,’ Hardison says, and his hand on Eliot’s knee strokes a soft circle. ‘We got the master of cooking to help here to help us.’  
Eliot huffs, but it’s more than halfway to a contented laugh and at least a little bit a reaction to their closeness.  
A few minutes later, Parker speaks up again, this time sounding happy with herself.  
‘Hey, Hardison. I found out how to get him to stop shouting.’


End file.
